Lucien

by James Moloney

  During our embraces and questions, Tamlyn had stayed back, unnoticed by my parents. When my father finally saw him, he released me and stood staring. He had guessed the truth about Tamlyn on our last return to Haywode so it was hardly surprising that he stiffened at the sight of him. Birdie sensed the sudden change in her husband and soon she was staring at Tamlyn, too. Neither seemed eager to welcome him back.

  ‘I thought all the Wyrdborn were gone,’ Ossin said in a voice that only Birdie and I could hear.

  ‘The Wyrdborn are gone, Father,’ I said. ‘Tamlyn is no longer one of them, thanks to the wizards of Erebis Felan.’

  ‘So that fabled land does exist, after all?’

  ‘We have just come from there,’ I told him, but this wasn’t the time to explain any more, especially when Birdie had her own question.

  ‘And Nerigold’s little boy?’

  ‘We … we couldn’t bring him back with us. In fact, he may be dead, and Ryall, too. He drowned trying to save Lucien,’ I said.

  Thankfully, my mother guessed from my tentative reply that I didn’t want to say any more.

  Tamlyn ventured closer, although he didn’t breach the last few paces to join the reunion. For long moments, my parents stared at him until I said, ‘It’s true. Tamlyn is no different from you and me now.’

  My father accepted my word and offered his hand. ‘Welcome back to Haywode, then.’

  At last Tamlyn took the last few steps and offered his own hand in return. ‘There is nowhere I would rather be,’ he replied, his eyes looking to catch mine as I stood between Birdie and Ossin.

  The shock of our arrival was giving way to joy by this time.

  ‘Everyone must know,’ said Ossin. ‘There’s been little enough to celebrate in recent days. Let’s go to the inn. We’ll call the entire village to join us.’

  And off we went, my parents shouting into every doorway as we passed and waving friends to come and give me a hug. I looked for Hespa’s face among the rest, but she must have been on some errand for her mother. For the moment, I gave myself over to the joy our neighbours showed at my return.

  They all remembered Tamlyn, but by a different name, of course. To them he was Piet, the traveller who had first appeared with Nerigold and the baby we’d all assumed must be his. I had to be careful not to give the game away, and at first it was easy because each new arrival wanted simply to kiss me and ask the same question. Where had I been all this time?

  ‘To Vonne,’ I told them, since it made up part of the truth.

  ‘Ale for everyone,’ my father called to Darry Nettlefield, the innkeeper and not a man I particularly liked. But what did that matter today? He was pleased to see so many bodies crowding into his ale room and already he’d fetched his wife to help him fill tankards from the barrels.

  Finally, the voice I had been waiting for called from the doorway. ‘Silvermay, you’re home at last,’ cried Hespa.

  ‘I missed you more than anyone,’ I whispered into her ear while we held each other close.

  Hespa and I had been friends since before we could talk, and we’d certainly done a lot of that once our tongues learned how. We knew each other’s secrets and weaknesses; we had squabbled and made up; and together we had looked over every boy in the district, wondering what kind of husband he would make.

  ‘You’re making a habit of this,’ she said, breaking her hold. ‘Coming back without warning, I mean. And I see you’ve brought the same face as last time.’

  ‘Tamlyn’s been with me every minute since we left,’ I told her eagerly — and there it was. I’d done what I’d told myself to avoid.

  Hespa was hardly going to let my slip go unnoticed. ‘Tamlyn,’ she repeated. ‘But his name is Piet.’

  ‘Yes, yes,’ I spluttered. ‘I … I get it mixed up sometimes.’

  I cursed under my breath. That was the wrong thing to say. Why would I get his name mixed up unless there was some secret to keep hidden? Hespa knew it, too.

  Tamlyn had heard my blunder. ‘Don’t say any more, Silvermay. It’s time they knew.’ And before I could respond, he called in a commanding voice, ‘Everyone, if you would all listen for a moment, I have something to explain.’

  The ale room was quickly silent, except for the shuffling of feet as they waited for Tamlyn to begin.

  ‘You all know me as Piet. I have been to Haywode twice before, first with a woman named Nerigold and her baby. Now I am here again and it is time I stopped hiding behind a false name. I am not Piet, but Tamlyn Strongbow, and if that last name sounds familiar, then it is because you have heard of my father, Lord Coyle.’

  The gasps that resounded around the room forced him to halt for a moment. Glances were shared with neighbours and family, but all too soon every eye returned to Tamlyn and none now viewed him with the same good will.

  ‘Then you are a Wyrdborn,’ said Mr Nettlefield, speaking for them all.

  ‘When I was here before, yes, that was true,’ Tamlyn said. ‘It was my Wyrdborn strength that let me work your fields longer and harder than any of you. I am ashamed to tell you that the damage in the forest not far from here was done by my hands, too. For that, I am sorry. But since you last saw me, Silvermay and I have travelled to Erebis Felan and there the wizards stripped away my powers. I stand before you now as one of the commonfolk.’ He looked around the room, into every face that would return his gaze, until his eyes settled on me. ‘Yes, one of the commonfolk, like Silvermay and the rest of you.’

  ‘When will Coyle return?’ asked a man from behind me.

  ‘My father is dead and my brother, Hallig, too. All the Wyrdborn are dead.’

  This set the inn abuzz and it was a full two minutes before the room became quiet again so that Tamlyn could finish what he had to say.

  ‘If you doubt me, then take the word of one you trust,’ and again he singled me out.

  ‘It’s true,’ I told them all. ‘I saw the Wyrdborn die myself, every last one of them. They will never threaten Haywode again.’

  ‘More’s the pity,’ said Mr Nettlefield from behind the bar.

  I was stunned to hear him say such a thing, and I doubted mine was the only face that stared at him, bewildered.

  ‘You heard me right,’ he said sourly. ‘Life might have been hard when the Wyrdborn came to rob us all, but there were no wars to carry off our sons and brothers.’

  A murmur of agreement rose around me. There were reluctant nods, and I saw tears in the eyes of Obie’s mother, who was nursing a mug of ale with her husband. I felt sick in the pit of my stomach. These people didn’t know it, but I had played a part in ridding Athlane of the Wyrdborn, even if I hadn’t set out with that in mind. Until that evening in Mr Nettlefield’s tavern, I was certain their absence could only make our lives better. Now I wondered how true that was. Hadn’t I witnessed at close hand the lawlessness that was sweeping the kingdom?

  Then a deeper fear roused itself like a forgotten dragon. More than anything else, I had wanted to prevent the miseries I’d seen in the mosaics of Nan Tocha. Could it be that, instead, I had made them more likely to happen than ever?

  ‘Wyrdborn or not, this young man worked hard when he was here before,’ said Mr Grentree, stepping into the space that had opened up around Tamlyn. ‘I don’t care what his real name is, we can do with his help to get the harvest in.’

  His words were met with willing agreement. Apart from Tamlyn, every man in the tavern that afternoon was my father’s age or older.

  ‘I’ll be in the fields at first light,’ said Tamlyn with a smile.

  Tamlyn’s promise seemed a fitting way to end the celebration. Our neighbours began to file out into the afternoon sunshine, the men flushed from the tankards of ale, the women eager to be at their stoves. Their smiles were fading already, but at least our arrival had brought a little hope into a village already grieving for its dead.

  Mr Nettlefield didn’t seem moved. In the mean-spirited tone I’d known all my life, he said to Tamlyn, ‘Best to ge
t you working while we can. The religo’s men will be back soon enough to take you off to the fighting.’

  I wanted to punch him, or, better still, kick him where I’d kicked that brigand.

  The homecoming wasn’t over for us yet. Birdie took a pork pie she’d been saving from the pantry and began to heat it in a pot over the fire. She wouldn’t let me help with preparing the feast and insisted I sit with Ossin and Tamlyn. Being men, they were used to watching women work.

  I asked about my sisters, who lived on farms a few miles from Haywode, and was told a familiar story. They were well, but their husbands had been taken off to the fighting.

  ‘Is Mr Nettlefield right?’ I asked. ‘Will Norbett’s men come for Tamlyn, too?’

  ‘War is a kind of fire, Silvermay,’ said my father. ‘It eats everything until there is nothing left to burn and only then does it peter out. Yes, they will come, not for him alone, but for me and the few men still strong enough to lift a sword, no matter how old they are.’

  ‘Where is the fighting?’ asked Tamlyn.

  ‘All across the country, I fear,’ Ossin told him. ‘I suffered my wound not far from here, in a clash with Religo Lofren’s band, a sorry bunch not much different from us. No one fights with any conviction, they fight to stay alive. It is the worst kind of war.’

  ‘So each religo is simply protecting what he can for the moment?’ Tamlyn continued.

  ‘That was my guess, too,’ my father replied. ‘But there have been no reports of fighting for more than a week now and that makes me suspicious. Religos are not like the Wyrdborn; they know that strength lies in alliances. If I’m right, they have sent emissaries to one another, hoping to build even bigger armies.’

  ‘For even bigger battles,’ said Tamlyn.

  Ossin nodded. ‘That is what worries me more than anything — one mighty battle. It doesn’t matter how the men line up, because the two sides will be evenly matched to draw every drop of blood from each other until there is not a soul left alive. Who will tend the fields, then? Who will father the children? Athlane will be a wasteland for a hundred years.’

  ‘Please stop, Father,’ I whispered.

  There was already too much in my head and any more would surely make it burst.

  Later, over dinner, I asked my parents, ‘Do you wish Tamlyn was still a Wyrdborn so that he could protect our village and spare us all from the fighting?’

  ‘Don’t answer, Ossin,’ said Tamlyn, turning his eyes to me. ‘I know what you are thinking, Silvermay. You think we shouldn’t have gone to Erebis Felan.’

  ‘Has it done us any good?’ I replied. ‘Think of who has died. Geran and …’ I couldn’t say Lucien’s name, not when we were yet to tell his story. ‘Now we’ve come back to find Athlane worse than when we left it. You didn’t want to come with me to Erebis Felan, but I talked you into it. It was my idea.’

  ‘And I’m glad you did, Silvermay. I would never have done it without you.’

  ‘But that’s what I feel so guilty about,’ I blurted out through tears. ‘None of these dangers would have happened if I hadn’t been so sure I was right.’

  Tamlyn waited to see if I had any more misery to spill out. When I fell silent, he took my hand.

  ‘Everything you did, you did from the goodness of your heart. Now that I am one of the commonfolk I know how important it is to live that way. Fate may take some cruel twists, Silvermay, but it is not malicious or contrary. It is the good of heart who win out in the end, because their intentions have a strength all their own.’

  ‘I wish I could believe that as strongly as you do,’ I said. ‘I’m worried that I have misled you, that it has all been a lie, and that we have delivered the entire kingdom into the hands of an evil we cannot stop.’

  I could see in Tamlyn’s face that he wanted to argue with me, yet he stayed silent. Slowly, his confidence changed to the blank stare of the perplexed.

  23

  Blisters

  There is no better feeling in the entire world than waking up in your own bed after months of sleeping wherever you could find a little space, often on the bare ground. The straw inside the mattress seemed to remember my shape and, now that it felt me within its embrace, was determined to keep me snug within its warmth. I would have lain there all day if duty hadn’t prodded me into action. My mother was already going about the morning chores she had handled alone since I’d run off to Vonne months before. Although I could easily have convinced myself that one more day wouldn’t make any difference, I thought of Tamlyn and how he’d said he would be first into the fields. It was already an hour past first light.

  ‘We have to wake Tamlyn,’ I said to Birdie, poking my head through the curtain that gave me a little privacy in our one-roomed cottage.

  She sent me an accusing look. ‘He’s been gone since before dawn and without any breakfast, too.’

  I dressed quickly and went after him, carrying the porridge that Birdie had warmed on the stove. I wasn’t the only one on the way to the fields. There was Mr Grentree with an old scythe over his shoulder, and I could see another figure picking his way gingerly, as though afraid of tripping over. It was the father of Mr Stenglass, our blacksmith, and seventy years old if he was a day. He wouldn’t be much use, I thought, but in a village where all the men had been snatched away to war, the work was left to whoever remained.

  That meant the women folk, and the deeper I walked into the cornfields the more of them I saw already at work. Many had children gathered around them like ducklings, collecting the stalks once they were cut. One young mother had even brought her newborn, who lay waving his arms in the shade of the nearest tree.

  Tamlyn wasn’t in the cornfield. Beside it, a stand of wheat still hadn’t been cut, and if rain came before it was gathered into barns, the grain would be ruined. He was hard at work with the scythe and already a patch twenty paces square lay ready for bundling.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said, accepting the bowl of porridge from my hands. I could see the blisters already forming on his.

  Together we looked out across the dull gold of the wheat.

  ‘There’s so much of it,’ I said.

  He didn’t answer, except to thank me a second time for the porridge. Then clamping his hand around the scythe’s wooden shaft once more, he set to work.

  I hurried home and changed into a dress that was little more than a rag. I wasn’t going to ruin something half-decent with a day’s work in the fields.

  When I returned, my father, despite his injured arm, was moving from field to field offering advice. Harvesting was men’s work and few of the women knew what to do.

  ‘Silvermay, tie the wheat into sheaves,’ he ordered.

  Harvesting the wheat was hard work, whether wielding the scythe or gathering the stalks. Tamlyn had already been working an hour, swinging to and fro in a rhythm that slowly drained his strength. He clutched at his back whenever he stopped to rest. My own back was soon complaining. Bend, straighten, bend, straighten — if I had been a stick, I would have snapped in two.

  By the time Ossin brought us our lunch in a basket he dangled from his good arm, Tamlyn’s hands were a mess of blood. My father offered no sympathy, though, and neither did Tamlyn expect any. There was little time to rest. Clouds were building in the west, which meant we had to finish the job today.

  ‘Have you seen Hespa?’ I asked Ossin as he was leaving. ‘Could you ask her to help us?’

  He gave me a look as though I should know better, and he was right, of course. My friend worked hard in her parents’ house, but she wasn’t about to ruin her hands in the fields or expose her milky skin to the midday sun.

  By late in the afternoon, the older men were exhausted. Some of them had to be helped home across the stubble because they had stayed at the task longer than they should have. Many of the women had to take fractious children home to bed, and not all returned. Finally, the last of them went off to cook the evening meal, even though I could see ears of corn still waiting to be
harvested. My father gathered what he could with his one hand, while I carried sheaf after sheaf to the barn and cajoled a gang of little children to help me with the rest. And through all this, Tamlyn kept up the steady swish, swish of the blade.

  ‘It will rain tonight. What we don’t get into the barn will be lost,’ said Ossin.

  Only the three of us remained by then and, to be honest, I wasn’t much use. Some invisible torturer was jabbing a spear into the base of my spine every time I straightened up. To avoid the bending, I dropped to my knees and crawled around like a baby, gathering what I could.

  There was barely enough light to see a yard in front of us when the blade of Tamlyn’s scythe felled the last of the wheat. He joined me on the ground to scrabble together the last of the sheaves, his head hanging low between his shoulders like a beaten dog. Then it was across the stubble for one final visit to the barn.

  On the short walk from there to our house, the first rain began to fall.

  ‘We did it,’ said Ossin. ‘Not a grain has been left out there to spoil.’

  ‘Tamlyn did it,’ I replied. ‘Without him, half the wheat would still be standing.’

  I took his hand, but he gasped and snatched it away. On my palm and the pads of my fingers I felt the stickiness of blood.

  ‘I’m sorry. They must be painful.’

  ‘A bit, yes,’ he said softly.

  Only when we reached home did I see how badly his skin was torn.

  ‘What a mess!’ cried Birdie when she’d cleaned the blood from his hands with a damp cloth. ‘There’s barely any skin left at all. Silvermay, fetch my bag of potions.’

  I winced when she pulled out a dark green jar. I knew it well; every child in Haywode who had ever grazed a knee or cut a foot on a rock knew that jar. Tamlyn’s hands were about to sting a whole lot more.

  ‘Curse the gods! You’re not a Wyrdborn, are you, Birdie?’ he cried.

  ‘Be still and stop complaining,’ snapped my mother, forcing his hands open to continue dabbing ointment onto the blisters.